Few buildings in Europe can offer GMP manufacturing, laboratories, offices and housing for scientists. SOKAI Hub Gipuzkoa plans to offer all four.
We have described San Sebastián as a growing centre for life sciences investment and innovation and traced the region's journey from steel to science. The most tangible expression of that momentum is SOKAI Hub Gipuzkoa, rising on the site of the former Illunbe leisure complex. Stephen Ryan, founder of Life Sciences Real Estate, visited on 1 October.
Location
The site sits on an incline on the city's southern edge, within the recently expanded Basque technology park (Parque Tecnológico de Euskadi) and close to its Miramón campus, Donostia University Hospital and the Biodonostia research institute. Next door, the council plans to turn the Illunbe bullring into a 15,000-seat arena by 2030. Work on a new entrance roundabout is due to start in November.
From the site it is a pleasant 20-minute walk downhill, through the Anoeta sports complex, home to La Liga club Real Sociedad, to a city of beaches, river and belle époque streets. The developers' pitch is that San Sebastián's compact scale, natural setting, culture, gastronomy and quality of life allow people to build a career and a life in the same place. For a sector competing hard for scientific talent, that is no small advantage.
Financing and timetable
The scheme is promoted by Quercus Investments and Columbus Venture Partners, the firm led by Viralgen founder Javier García Cogorro. The developers bought the land in February 2025 and secured a building licence quickly. Total investment is around €80 million. In May the project closed €64.5 million of financing: €50.5 million of senior debt from a Banco Sabadell-led syndicate and €14 million of subordinated debt from Buenavista Equity Partners.
The building is due to be partially operational in early 2027 and complete a year later.
A building organised around production
The developers' brochure describes a single ecosystem combining offices, laboratories, GMP space, technical warehousing, support areas, services, common areas and accommodation for talent. What is distinctive, it argues, is how the uses relate: each keeps the functional independence its activity requires, within shared infrastructure that brings teams closer, organises flows and makes operations more efficient.
The 45,151 sq m is lettable area; the built area of c. 64,000 sq m also counts space that is not let, such as the car park, circulation and cores.
The real differentiator is how the space is stacked. Because the building is set into the hillside, its lower ground floors open onto a sunken service yard. The GMP floor is 6.70 metres high and divided into four modules of 2,350 to 2,450 sq m. Beneath it, the warehousing, which is 4.80 metres high, has trailer access. Above the GMP floor, a technical level carries plant and services.
Above ground, laboratories and offices, 3.70 metres high, are arranged around central cores. Units range from under 300 to just over 700 sq m, so a start-up and a scale-up can sit on the same floor. The Talent House provides 57 one- and two-bedroom apartments for relocated professionals, visiting researchers and teams needing an immediate solution while they set up. A restaurant, a central meeting space known as the Ágora, terraces, a gym and an events hall complete the offer.
Leasing progress
The anchor tenant is BIC Gipuzkoa, the provincial business and innovation centre, which will take at least 5,000 sq m and move in March 2027. Its space includes 11 private laboratories and 21 incubation modules.
The developers' schedule shows about 7,800 sq m of the laboratory and office space let, roughly half. All four GMP modules, the warehouses and the technical areas are still being marketed.
How it compares
European buildings rarely combine GMP production with research and offices. Kadans' Mayde at King's Cross in London mixes GMP, laboratories and offices across 10,500 sq m. Mirai House at Leiden Bio Science Park pairs NecstGen's cell and gene therapy facility with Leiden University Medical Centre laboratories. In Berlin, Bayer and Charité are setting up a centre combining a start-up incubator with GMP cell and gene therapy production. It will anchor a new 20,000 sq m lab building due to open in 2028.
Like them, SOKAI belongs to an established cluster: the technology park's Miramón campus is about 96% occupied, and Gipuzkoa has a gene therapy manufacturing base including Viralgen and Vivebiotech.
SOKAI goes further: its GMP production space alone nearly matches the whole of Mayde, and none of the others offers housing.
San Sebastián is on track to have something few European cities can offer: a single site where a company can move from the bench to clinical-grade production without changing address.
Special thanks to Darío Sánchez for his on-site guidance and expertise.
